And a thesaurus is invaluable for giving you options. Livelier, more colourful words for the dull, top-of-the-head words that come so easily to mind but can flatten your writing.
Finally, enjoy the experience: Writing is a solitary business and most writers are a wobbling mass of insecurities. A writing class is one way of meeting other writers and sharing hopes and experiences. You will get much encouragement and pleasure from a course that is designed to help you satisfy a need to write. And who knows? The masterpiece may be lurking there inside your head just waiting for you to set it down.
MAKE A BOOK OR TWO
Apart from stuffing them into that bottom drawer, what do you do with all those stories and poems you’ve been writing over the years? They’ve come sullenly back from wherever you’ve submitted them, they’ve been entered in club competitions and may or may not have won prizes, but what then? What a waste.
I was part of a five-member critique group that met once a month. For each meeting we were required to submit a new story, distributed beforehand, and at the meeting we discussed, evaluated and constructively criticised each other’s stories. That was ten or eleven stories a year that went into that pesky drawer eventually. What a waste.
And I don’t know about you, but since becoming a grandmother I’ve been writing and illustrating stories for children (often featuring them in various adventures) on their birthdays, for Christmas, and for any other occasion that arose. I’ve written poems for their (home-made) birthday cards. I’ve written articles for them on such occasions as Halloween or Valentine’s Day - this last typed on to a big red heart-shaped piece of card and sent through the post. These writings were joyfully received, taken to school to show the teacher, and the copies were pushed into that drawer. What a waste.
What about those biographical essays that you write because you must, but which don’t fit the family history or autobiography because they would over-balance it, literarily speaking. Into the drawer they go. What a waste.
Too Good to Lose: You can, however, make something of all these. Dig them out of that drawer, sort them into categories and see what you’ve got. There are probably some adult stories and poems, some children’s stories and poems, some essays or feature articles, some biographical pieces. If you want them preserved in some way, left for your descendants and posterity - and who doesn’t, they represent an important part of our lives after all - then you can do so quite easily, and in a more permanent form than leaving them loose in a drawer.
Here’s a hint: if your material is stored on a computer make a note on each document about word count and/or number of pages. This helps when totting up whether you have enough for a book.
A Literary Hot-Pot: Having sorted the pieces, edit them if necessary. Here’s your chance to incorporate all those second thoughts. Print them out on A4 paper in single-spaced text, in an attractive type-face so they look really good. If you have enough pieces you can sort them into separate categories: adult fiction, poetry, autobiographical essays and so on. If you haven’t enough, you might be inspired to sit at your desk and write more to make up the short-fall.
Add anything in the way of dates, notes or explanations for each piece if you think these might add interest, entertain or intrigue your future readers, especially helpful in the case of biographical essays.
Add illustrations, such as scanned photographs and drawings, especially for children’s fiction. Even if you can’t draw, consider using the same technique that children themselves use - stick figures drawn in crayon, houses with two windows, a door, a wobbly path and curly smoke coming out of the chimney, dogs that are all tails and teeth. Or cut pictures from magazines.
I often use a collage technique that is very effective partly because it is not possible to be finicky and precise. This involves cutting shapes out of coloured paper from, for example, magazine illustrations and, piece by piece, create pictures that children love because they are so bold and colourful.
Finishing Touches: When you have enough stories or articles to make up a satisfactory length book, number the pages, construct a preface or foreword if you think it appropriate, and add a contents page. Then pop along to a stationery shop and buy some sheets of coloured A4 card to use as covers. Take the lot to the nearest copy shop and have the book(s) plastic covered and ring-bound for only three or four dollars.
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